Donald Trump Sure Has a Problem With Democracy

Though George Washington was elected unanimously, he was always a reluctant president. He pursued a second term in 1792 only at the urging of his cabinet, and in 1796, when he insisted it was time to step down, he famously warned that not to do so risked a return to the very tyranny Americans had fought to overthrow.

“The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create whatever the form of government, a real despotism,” Washington wrote in what’s become known as his Farewell Address. “A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position.”

In the years since, millions of Americans have put their lives on the line to protect against the despotism that Washington warned about. In World War II, Americans sacrificed their lives and lost their loved ones to defeat dictators in Germany, Italy and Japan. For nearly the rest of the 20th century, the United States led the free world to preserve democratic ideals against the Soviet Union’s push for Communism.

That’s a proud history, and it hasn’t been much of a challenge until recently for American presidents to extol it — the wisest of them mindful of how far short of its ideals the United States has at times fallen, even as it has tried to guide other nations toward democracy as the surest safeguard of human rights, peace and opportunity.

But President Trump just doesn’t get it. There’s something in the man that impels him reflexively to celebrate the authoritarian model. At a Republican fund-raiser, in remarks reported by CNN, Mr. Trump lavished praise on President Xi Jinping of China, who recently consolidated his power and moved to change the rules so he could effectively become “emperor for life.”

“He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Xi to the Republican donors, at a luncheon at Mar-a-Lago. Then he went on seemingly to express interest in doing the same thing in the United States so that he, too, could rule forever. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot some day.”

Mr. Trump was surely joking about becoming president for life himself. But there can be little doubt now that he truly sees no danger in Mr. Xi’s “great” decision to extend his own rule until death. That craven reaction is in line with Mr. Trump’s consistent support and even admiration for men ruling with increasingly brutal and autocratic methods — Vladimir Putin of Russia, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, to name a few.

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The perspective is very different in Europe, where leaders, shaken by Mr. Trump’s election, initially hoped Mr. Xi would help defend a global system based on democracy and rule of law but now fear he, too, is becoming a threat.

Mr. Trump certainly needs to find ways to work with Mr. Xi on major international challenges. But past presidents have combined efforts to deepen relations with China with advocacy for expanding human rights there. Mr. Trump clearly sees no national interest or responsibility in trying to promote democracy. On the way to amassing more power for himself, Mr. Xi has moved to crush all rivals, silence all dissent, undermine Chinese institutions, promote a cult of personality, weaken the free market economy, destroy any hint of an independent press and otherwise tighten control over a society that is already among the world’s most restricted.

As for Mr. Trump’s line about becoming president for life: His audience was said to respond with laughter, and let’s hope it was nervous laughter. They and we have reason for anxiety. It’s not too much to say that as the authoritarian model gathers strength abroad, democracy is under assault at home. The Russian government meddled in the 2016 election to help elect Mr. Trump, and American intelligence agencies have said they anticipate further Russian interference in the midterms this year. Mr. Trump has remained strangely indifferent to this meddling.

He has also proved ignorant of and impatient with checks on presidential power, whether they be courts that thwart his unconstitutional actions or a Justice Department that won’t jump to his orders to investigate political rivals.

When you consider that Mr. Trump lost the popular vote by almost three million ballots, claiming the presidency only through the antidemocratic mechanics of the Electoral College — not to mention with some help from Russia — it may be understandable that he would be uncomfortable with democracy. Ultimately it will be up to the American voter, in 2018 and then 2020, to fulfill Mr. Washington’s hopes for the resilience of the American system.

A version of this editorial appears in print on March 6, 2018, on Page A26 of the New York edition with the headline: Mr. Trump’s Problem With Democracy. Today's Paper|Subscribe